For decades Private Property (1960) was thought lost. Upon being discovered and restored the film became widely available via a Blu-Ray release through Cinelicious Pics. Back in the hands of the public Private Property became a film sold on the merits of its individual parts. Director Leslie Stevens was toted as a protege of Orson Welles while the contributions of Conrad Hall were made a primo selling point in the advertising copy. Little if anything was said of the merits of Private Property as a film. Instead the discourse around the picture was focused on the artists behind it.
From early on in the film the threat of sexual violence looms. Private Property is a film beholden to The Petrified Forest (1936) and a precursor to Knife In The Water (1962). The private property the title refers to is both that of luxurious Hollywood homes and a husband’s ownership of his wife. Again and again Private Property reiterates this theme that a wife is the sexual object of the husband as two drifters leer at the couple, envious of their physical intimacy.
The nuclear family as a social construct is what is under threat in Private Property. The patriarchal status quo is challenged by voyeurism and rape; it’s a conflict between hedonistic barbarism and middle class values. The lens fetishizes the body of housewife Kate Manx, reducing her to her value as a conduit for male pleasure. Her job, in the social economy of the film, is to safeguard her husband’s property including her own body. The gaze of the two drifters undermines her authority and strips her of any autonomy she might have in her role as homemaker. Private Property is a film of domestic power struggles.
Private Property is effective because of the artistic pedigree of its cast and crew. This pot boiler becomes something special and unique because of the filmmakers’ ambitions to create a film worthy of the European masters. Yet, the manner of the drifters and the concerns with middle class social values render the film as distinctly American. Private Property owes as much too Fellini as it does to John Steinbeck and Orson Welles. Corey Allen and Warren Oates play their parts with the legacy of James M. Cain in mind, grounding their characterizations in American pulp fiction.
The film has the taut pacing and dramatic economy of good television. Modestly budgeted Private Property relies on the tricks of that medium to fabricate suspense effectively. Private Property, like The Young Savages (1960), is a fusion of European artfulness with American television’s sense of dramaturgy. This makes the film very much the product of its moment, for better or worse. Still, nothing can detract from its ability to keep the spectator hooked and immersed in its titillating drama.
